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Linux distro poll


Which Linux distro do you Prefer?  

1 member has voted

  1. 1. Which Linux distro do you Prefer?

    • RedHat / Fedora Core
      4
    • Novell - Suse
      0
    • Debian
      2
    • Gentoo
      4
    • Slackware
      1
    • Ubuntoo
      6
    • Knoppix
      0
    • Mandriva
      1
    • Linux From Scratch
      0
    • Other (specify which one in your response)
      2


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ok so I have gone to Gentoo.org to download and I get this:

 

Gentoo 2005.1 Minimal install CD

(around 60 megabytes depending on arch)

alpha amd64 hppa ia64 ppc (32 bit) ppc64 sparc64 x86

 

Gentoo 2005.1 Universal install CD

(up to 700 megabytes depending on arch)

alpha amd64 hppa ppc (32 bit) sparc64 x86

 

Gentoo 2005.1 Package CD

(up to 700 megabytes depending on arch)

alpha amd64 ppc (32 bit) ppc (64 bit) sparc64 x86

 

I'm already lost...

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ok so I have gone to Gentoo.org to download and I get this:

I'm already lost...

You know about burning CD images, right?

 

Well, those three files are different images. The first two are bootable Gentoo installation CDs. The small one requires an internet connection, while the honker can do without. You might try the small one (minimal install) first, because it just may find your internet connection. I downloaded the honker (universal install) because, well... I can. But it turns out I didn't need it. The install found my DSL (almost) and I installed fresh packages from the net. The third CD is just optional extra packages for Linux that aren't necessary to boot (like KDE). I haven't used that one, yet. I don't see any reason to download every package and only use a few.

 

In short, get the little one, and try it first. Also what is your architecture? Intel, AMD, Mac, what? 32-bit or 64?

 

Either way, you will want to read the install guide once through first, to better understand what your about to tackle. Then be prepared for quite a bit of download time and compile time. Also, don't be afraid to start over. If it's worth doing, it's worth getting more coffee (or something like that). I had to reinstall 5 or 6 times but I'm a perfectionist. Plus it took me awhile to understand what was going on, and I was doing a more advanced stage 1/3 install. I wouldn't recommend it, because I had to change a few things to make it work. (Learned a lot, though.)

 

Internet install guide (little CD)

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml

 

Offline install guide (honker)

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/2005.1/index.xml

 

Disclaimer: a successful install will leave you with a text prompt. You will then have to download and configure a window manager like KDE or Gnome. But by the time you get that far, you should be pretty good at nabbing packages.

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good I was hoping I didnt have to sit around waiting for the 700Mb+ file!

 

Im going to install it on a 'dummy' PC first - my old one, I just thought that would be a good idea. It runs on a 32bit Intel.

 

Thanks South, Jay-qu

It's got internet, right? It will still need to download all that during install. Luckily, it is mostly automated.

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the two OSes have nothing in common, except that they will possibly use the same hard drive.

 

i would say get partition magic and partition off some of the drive (depending on the specs, i would say at least 5-10 gigs) dont make any partitions, leave the space free, then you can use that space to create more partitions, but all that is in the gentoo doc, if you would like for me to come up with a good partitioning scheme, leave me the hd space and hardware specs and i'll do my best, unless you just want to go with 3 partitions...

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make sure that your cd is burned propperly first, cuz i know that there were a few times when i have burnt and ISO onto the disk (then you look at it and go duh what a stupid thing to do...)

make sure that it is the right cd for the right architecture

http://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/x86/2005.1/installcd/

 

either minimal or universal do well, minimal would require you to download the system snapshot, universal has one on the cd, so if you know how to use links2 web briwser then you can do minimal, if you have never heard of the browser then you are way better off sticking with the universal CD (that also has a portage snapshot and stuff...

 

then burn the image onto a CD, if you have an older cdrom use a regular cd not a rewritable, make sure you burn the iso contents on to the cd, not the ISO itself (so dont just drag and srop it onto the cd) (you might need nero or alcohol or some sort of more advanced cd creator or something to burn it correctly) then make sure you can see files on the cd (although it may or may not error out under windows for random reasons, and then you should be able to boot, if you have some way to get into bot menu (if you have one, like my laapy does) make sure to do that and boot off of the CD, other then that, there is very little that can go wrong... if you cant figure out whether your processor is i386, i486, i586 or i686 ask.... most likely 6...

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ok I will just go with 3. I had some trouble booting to the disk yesterday - it says in the CMOS that it goes to CD before the hard drive.. so I dont know whats going on

What do you mean 'trouble booting to disk'? Does that mean you got Gentoo installed?

 

CMOS should be set that way. Just be sure you take any bootable CDs out.

 

I got a dual boot w/XP and 4 partitions: hda1 (25g-win), hda2 (100m-boot), hda3 (1536m-swap), hda4 (11g-root) And, alexander is right. It doesn't matter whether you choose to keep windows or not.

 

I was already reformatting XP, so I just left some space unpartitioned for Linux. If you don't want to reinstall or remove windows then you need a partition manager/resizer. I haven't found a free one, nor have I paid for any, so I can't help ya there.

 

I just burnt 4 backup CDs and reinstalled XP into a smaller partition using diskpart on the M$ install CD. I should caution you that windows should be installed first, because it will overwrite the MBR, destroying any linux bootloader you install with Gentoo, and the M$ bootloader is not as easy to figure out.

 

The remaining free space I partitioned manually with fdisk on the Gentoo LiveCD. The Gentoo Handbook has a section that explains how to use fdisk.

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yeah, its no big secret, i've been saying that for something like 5-6 months now... but ofcourse nobody listens to alex.... it literaly took my friend 13 button presses to install it, thats with root password and hostname....

 

the guys at Ubuntu labs have been working hard to make all this work seamlessly or error out and not install at all, so you have a really good chance of being good and all supported, also if you have the luxury of getting a live cd and running that on your system first, chances are that if you can run that cd pretty well, the system will have the least amount of problems installing on your system.... or if you are a lucky bastard like me and you can get official ubuntu cd's from ubuntu with every new release (but thats cuz i'm one of these people who actually distribute ubuntu, and its for the college's GNU Linux club technically...) but its a nice little package, live and installation cd in a colorful booklet, what else can you ask for?

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